Britain's battered flood defences to be inspected by Army to assess how badly they are damaged

Inspection: The military has been ordered to check out the country's battered flood defences

An emergency MOT of all Britain's battered flood defences has been ordered by Defence Minister Philip Hammond.

The Tory minister said the nation's ailing infrastructure needed to be checked in the wake of the storms.

Mr Hammond revealed that the situation was so serious the military would do the two-year job in just five weeks.

He added that 5,000 more troops have been placed on standby to help storm-battered towns and flooded villages.

The Defence Secretary's intervention came amid growing criticism of the Government's handling of the crisis.

However, Mr Hammond suggested Town Halls had been reluctant to take British troops.

He said: "We offered troops quite a long while ago to civil authorities who wanted them.

"What we've done over the last ten days is pushed them a bit more aggressively at those civil authorities.

"And I think putting military liaison officers into the gold commands, so that they're embedded in the system, has been a major step forward and I think probably we'll want to make sure in future that we do that at a very early stage in any emerging problem."

He added: "We've agreed with the Environment Agency that we'll use Royal Engineers to do a very rapid inspection of all the nation's flood defences, so we're going to try and do in five weeks what would be about a two year programme of inspection just to assess the level of damage."